


Moth to a Flame

by needles



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Ereri Week, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 06:29:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4049728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/needles/pseuds/needles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It draws him so badly but does he deserve to touch?</p>
<p>For the Ereriweek 2015 Pining prompt</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moth to a Flame

The hard stone of the wall felt chill beneath his shirt-clad shoulder as he leaned against the window watching. Levi slowly rotated the teacup in his fingers unaware he was even doing it until he felt the handle brush against his thumb. He sipped the cooling liquid, his eyes never leaving the group training below.

Then he jerked himself upright sighing, stupid, so stupid. The idiotic daydreams of an old man, that's all this was. The years of stress were obviously taking their toll on his mind. He'd become a doting fool, beguiled by the vitality and optimism that he had long since lost. If he had even had it. A childhood cut short by hunger, grief and the sheer imperative to survive. He'd done things no child should ever need to do and seen things that made him hardened and cynical by the time he was the age they were now. 

Even Eren had come through his mother's death and retained more hope than Levi. Maybe that was because he'd had friends, he hadn't faced it all alone. Kenny was hardly a parent and certainly not a friend. Oh, he was grateful to him for teaching him how to survive, but it had been at a cost. He'd become a beast, surviving on instinct. 

For a brief moment he thought he'd found the light again with Isobel and Farlan, only for it to be snatched away from his grasp, twisting the knife a little deeper in his soul until he didn't believe he deserved better.

Eren's eyes still burned with life. His were dead, cold, calculating only his chances of survival. Eren was angry, true, but it was out there, plain as day, shout it from the rooftops anger. Levi had buried his anger in a place so deep and dark even he was unsure how to find it, let alone release it.

He turned away. He had no right to touch that flame he'd lost, no right at all. And yet it drew him like a moth, and like the moth he would gladly burn for a fleeting moment in that light.


End file.
